That Scared the Shit Out of Them: A New Narrative

Part 2 of Philip Ewell Go Down In History
(revised with new material, July 2023)

Legal Battle for Renewal and Tenure

In 2014, Philip Ewell encountered one among the many potential disappointments of academia described in Part I: denial of tenure. For faculty with tenure track appointments, denial of tenure is equivalent to dismissal, as it entails the withholding of a further employment contract, normally the following year. It signals that a decisive number among the tenure committee, department chair, president, board, or any others involved, believe the candidate will not contribute sufficiently to the institution’s future, however that may be understood individually or collectively. Official criteria for tenure are many and varied but typically include an extensive portfolio of publications in reputable journals, evidence of substantial contributions to the university in the form of service on committees and other responsibilities, ability to attract institutional funding, visibility in the field at large, student reviews and teaching evaluations, and so on.

Everybody in academia knows, however, that tenure decisions often come down to unofficial — that is to say, unfair — factors. These can include all the intricate faculty politics described in Part I, the effects of relationships and coalitions built with other faculty over many years, the candidate’s conformity or nonconformity to ideas fashionable in his or her field or institution at the time, any form of discrimination, and a limitless array of other considerations, some unknown even to the candidate. Some institutions require that the president or other figure furnish the candidate, in writing, the reasons for the decision on request. Such documents are often meaningless, however, since they employ the same obfuscations and avoidance tactics employed in the decision process itself. In short, the tenure process can manifest all the meanness, bordering on viciousness, described in Part I, of academic life, masked though it may be under the bureaucratic language and practiced behavior of a fearful and conflict-avoidant work culture.

Denial of tenure can be devastating for the candidate and have permanent effects on his or her career. Nevertheless, it occurs to faculty in all disciplines, for all sorts of reasons, just or unjust. It is one of the few large risks of entering the otherwise comparatively low-risk profession of academic work.

Ewell believed his dismissal in 2014 was due to racism. He undertook a two-year legal battle to regain his position at Hunter College and achieve tenure. During this period, he read works on race, racism and feminism. He ultimately immersed himself in works of Critical Race Theory and experienced what he terms an “antiracist snap.”

In the video excerpt above, Ewell states he was asking only for “equal treatment.” Whether racism was indeed at issue in his tenure dispute is not questioned in this article. However, it must be clarified tenure is not, as an expectation, awarded democratically to every faculty member, rather only to some, as described above.

Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, DEI, and Antiracism

Like music theory and musicology, Critical Theory is a specialized academic field studied and practiced professionally by a comparatively small number of persons. Unlike music theory or musicology, it now influences nearly every aspect of current daily life in most public and some private American universities, along with many corporations, the media, and increasingly, mainstream American politics.

Critical Theory employs in its premise that the world is replete with historic and contemporary inequities and unfairness of all kinds across all peoples and places. It does so selectively, however: according to the proponent, it isolates and amplifies specific inequities among and between races, genders, individuals of different sexual preferences, or more recently, gender identities and numerous other traits, chosen or inherited. It consolidates these disparities into a singular starting point for all thought, forming a reference from which to interpret everything. This basic Critical Theory feature is called “framing” or “reframing.” Since many groups suffer inequities, separate subfields have emerged. The subfield concerned with race is Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race Theory must be understood separately from “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (hereinafter referred to as DEI). DEI includes, but does not satisfy, the requirements of Critical Race Theory. It is a newer practice, “antiracism” that Critical Theorists advocate. Antiracism is not just intolerance for racism and the inclusion of all races, but also the mandate to proactively and publicly expose, diminish and implicitly reduce in value individuals, of all places and times, who have shown traces or patterns of racism, with the criteria for this being determined by Critical Race Theory itself. Critical Race Theorists typically treat as irrelevant any information that might cause the racism to appear any way other than how they wish it to appear. For others to do so in rebuttal is typically itself reframed as exemplary of racism or racist sympathy.

Personal attacks are avoided by viewing racism as a feature not of people, but of systems, such as societies, governments, universities, and other organizations. This is an example of “redefinition”. The typical stance of Critical Race Theory is that systemic, or “structural”, racism is everywhere and inherently pervades all human systems. Redefinition is acutely disorienting, since it uses familiar words but changes their meanings. In this case, it avoids placing blame for racism on anyone, while at the same time placing it upon everyone. That everyone participates in perpetuating racist structures is a premise, not an argument, of Critical Race Theory, and is known as “complicity.”

It might be supposed that Critical Race Theory advocates changing the troublesome systems to be no longer racist or exclusionary. But in fact, Critical Theorists wish to remove them altogether. This is referred to as “dismantling.” In practice, the objective can be accomplished only by transfer of power and influence from particular individuals to other particular individuals according to their race or, as a second choice, by converting the individuals in power or influence into adherents of Critical Race Theory. Such persons are then referred to as “allies” or “advocates.”

From this point, it might be supposed that by dismantling racist systems and rebuilding in their place new ones conceived through the visions of Critical Race Theorists, the objective will have been accomplished, historically oppressed groups will have all attained appropriate positions of power and influence, their ideas and culture made equal or dominant, and the cause will have been won. This, however, is also not the case. Critical Race Theory presents no unified picture of success or completion, nor does it decisively advance any particular specific replacement systems. To the contrary, it presents that discovering and exposing systemic racism must be ongoing, along with reframing and dismantling. The problem Critical Theory addresses is, for all practical purposes, permanent. This phenomenon will be investigated further in Part IV.

These, along with the contents of Part I, are the antecedents and circumstances Philip Ewell leveraged to notoriety.

The Punch

Prevailing in his tenure dispute and retaining his position at Hunter College, Ewell emerged with the belief that systemic racism, as understood by Critical Race Theory, not only explained his initial denial of tenure, but also the condition of the field of Music Theory, the United States, and much of the rest of the world.

On Nov 9, 2019 at a conference of The Society for Music Theory (hereinafter referred to as SMT) in Columbus, Ohio, Philip Ewell presented a talk entitled “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame”. It was culled from a longer, forthcoming paper of the same name. The talk’s timing ahead of the paper’s publication was probably an accident arising arbitrarily from the date of the conference. Ewell took the opportunity to read aloud some of its ideas to an audience of fellow academic music theorists.

Ewell singled out one music theorist in particular, Heinrich Schenker (1868 –  1935). Schenker’s music theory will be covered only briefly, since no comprehensive understanding of it is necessary to read Ewell’s paper, listen to his talk, or understand this article. Briefly, Schenker devised an elaborate system for analyzing musical works, specifically German ones, on a large formal scale. He believed hidden tonal structures governed and controlled German musical works, and that certain “foreground” tones were subject to the control of more structural “background” tones. These relationships were illustrated using what he called “graphs.”

Ewell is primarily interested however not in Schenkerian music theory, but in Heinrich Schenker himself. This is just such an example, as described in Part I, of a study neither of music nor of music theory, but of a music theorist, chosen in this case for his race and for his beliefs about race, power, inequality, and superiority.

Schenker, a German Jew, produced public and private writings against non-Germans, non-whites, and peoples of many other nations and creeds, including blacks. Some find that his views on hierarchy, structure and control among musical tones correlate philosophically and inextricably with his views on hierarchies and subjugation among peoples. Even though Schenker himself suggested exactly this, there is no universal agreement on exactly how the relationship between musical and social hierarchy works.

The SMT conference was live-streamed, and Ewell’s talk lasts approximately 20 minutes. It is advantageous to watch it in its entirety.

Response by the Journal of Schenkerian Studies

Ewell’s talk might have dissolved quietly into the insular academic music theory community were it not for one tiny but ruffled group, and one man in particular. Within the already-small population of academic music theorists can yet be located a subset so trifling as to approach nonexistence: specialists in Schenkerian musical analysis. The American headquarters for this rarified pursuit is The Center for Schenkerian Studies, in a building on the campus of the University of North Texas College of Music.

It is in this building that the bizarre story began. The Center publishes a small journal — this is in fact ludicrous overstatement; the Journal of Schenkerian Studies enjoys a circulation of some 30 (thirty) printed copies per year, supplemented with some internet usage. Were one to wish for oneself and one’s fellows a forever undisturbed existence in the most opaque and secluded privacy, one could hardly do better than to commit to Schenkerian analysis full-time. To locate any group flaunting a less conspicuous profile than the Journal of Schenkerian Studies prior to 2019 would have required a detective of shrewd and dogged perseverance. But their cover was blown by such a foolish misstep that the Journal is unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future.

A short summary of by Ewell of the next events is worth viewing before continuing:

Immediately following Philip Ewell’s talk at the SMT conference, Dr. Timothy L. Jackson, then editor in chief of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies (hereinafter referred to as the JSS), announced a special issue of the journal, to include a “Symposium on Philip Ewell’s 2019 SMT Plenary Paper.” In a truly inadvisable move, Jackson published the submissions without peer review, intending apparently to bypass usual academic channels and to force quickly into view a response showing resilience and engagement on the part of Schenkerian scholars. This decision alone furnished Ewell with a premium specimen for reframing: he would term the subterfuge “white male entitlement.” With peer review, someone might have noticed the potential for trouble and helped guide the effort. At very least, all credibility might not have been forfeited.

Opening the symposium, the authors jointly write with touching sincerity, “As the editors of an academic journal whose mission it is to encourage the exchange of ideas, we are pleased that these responses express a variety of thoughts and perspectives. Informed debate is the essence of scholarly inquiry, and a field or methodology, such as music theory, stands to prosper: by interrogating and critiquing itself.”

Believing they were participating in “informed debate” and “scholarly inquiry,” each writer played straight into Ewell’s hands.

David Beach wrote, “It is interesting that two people can read the same sources and come away with very different views, depending on one’s perspective,” as though discovering this fact with some surprise for the first time in his retirement. He proposes Ewell prove himself by publishing some Schenkerian work, trapping himself securely in Ewell’s white racial frame.

Jack Boss trots out a transcription of an Art Tatum jazz piano solo and ridiculously offers a Schenkerian analysis.

Richard Beaudoin titles his article “After Ewell” and echoes Critical Theory itself: “inclusivity means not only opening the field to unheard voices, but simultaneously to the ugly, unsettling, and undercutting information about the voices —- often male, often white —- that are represented there already.”

Allen Cadwallader essays a tiresome lecture on Schenker’s theories and hierarchies with sentences that begin, for example, “Consider the inverted pyramid of biology […]”.

Suzannah Clark echoes antiracism in agreeing that merely adding new repertoire to music theory “runs the risk of leaving the European tradition untouched.” Then she wanders off course for pages with analyses of examples from exactly that European tradition, seemingly drawn from other rejected papers.

Nicholas Cook tediously rebuts Ewell point by point, conspicuously quoting and commenting upon himself.

Charles Burkhart naïvely asks, “what is the point in dwelling on [Schenker’s] faults at such length? Why this animus?”, a quote Ewell would later use to great effect.

Barry Wiener defends Schenker in all the ways Ewell would later caricature as “patter” in virtual symposia, complete with fifty-four footnotes.

Stephen Lett, clearly in sympathy with the spirit if not certain details of Ewell’s talk, makes the odd statement, “We often say we are studying music, not doing politics.” Lett frames Schenkerian analysis as a “technology” that we are “performing”, and concludes we must “do so in ways that wreak less havoc.” (The first-person plural “we” in academic writing is almost never defined or identified.)

Rich Pellegrin, who was present at the SMT plenary talk, “was happy to see Philip Ewell stand in front of hundreds of theorists at the plenary session of the SMT annual meeting and begin his talk by stating what for me has always been a painfully obvious truth” — though not obvious enough to be found in any of his previous writings, which he cites heavily.

Another author who was also present, though wisely submitted anonymously, wrote, “I was the only person (that I could see) who didn’t stand for the ovation. […] I did not like the suggestion of reducing the core theory courses from four to two classes (most undergrads are bad enough after four classes as it is!)” — perhaps the only indisputable statement by any of the authors.

Boyd Pomeroy opens with, “In his thought-provoking paper, Ewell […]” — but the paper had not yet been released. All authors were in fact responding to Ewell’s plenary talk, with some evidently believing otherwise. Ewell would later enjoy relating this: “I would have suggested they wait for the article to come out, since they were getting quite an incomplete picture from my talk. […] In fact this is the only published response to a 20-minute talk that I’ve ever heard of.”

Christopher Segall, in apparent seriousness, proposes “re-appellation” — that is, renaming — of Schenkerian analysis to “prolongational analysis,” replacing German with English terms since “both alternatives carry less baggage.”

Stephen Slottow incredulously ponders whether Ewell was trying to say that “tonal music itself must be racist.” It turns out Ewell believes exactly this. But for Slottow, at least in 2019, it was “a proposition which I at least am not prepared to swallow.” Swallow it he soon would.

But by far, the star of this carnival of the Schenkerians was Timothy L. Jackson himself.

Ewell’s scapegoating of Schenker, Schenkerians, and Schenkerian analysis, occurs in the much larger context of Black-on-Jew attacks in the United States. Over a quarter-century ago, a detailed scholarly article was published on African American anti-Semitism in a refereed social sciences journal. The author observed that according to surveys, American Blacks were increasingly more inclined to hold anti-Semitic prejudices than Whites, and to blame Jews for their problems. […]  In this sense, Ewell’s denunciation of Schenker and Schenkerians may be seen as part and parcel of the much broader current of Black anti-Semitism. Given the history of racism against African Americans, there is a strong tendency today to excuse or downplay these phenomena, but they are real —and toxic. They currently manifest themselves in myriad ways, including the pattern of violence against Jews, the obnoxious lyrics of some hip hop songs, etc.

[ … ]

Of course, I understand full well that Ewell only attacks Schenker as a pretext to introduce his main argument: that liberalism is a racist conspiracy to deny rights to “people of color.” He is uninterested in bringing Blacks up to “standard” so they can compete. On the contrary, descriptions of black women in rap music is predominately dominated by their black male counterparts which might actually reflect a real problem between the tensions of gender relationships within African American communities.

[ … ]

As I see it, a fundamental reason for the paucity of African American women and men in the field of music theory is that few grow up in homes where classical music is profoundly valued, and therefore they lack the necessary background. To master classical performance practice on any instrument, to achieve musical literacy, and theoretical competence, one must begin intensive training when very young. Therefore, parents must provide their children with lessons and insist upon regular practice from an early age. Low socio-economic status does not preclude any racial group from doing so; poverty does not prevent setting priorities; it is not solely a matter of money. […] As a consequence of [ their ] early grounding, both of my parents loved classical music for the rest of their lives, even though they did not become musicians themselves. […] These personal experiences show that success in classical music is a matter of setting priorities, and summoning inner resources to succeed, no matter what it takes: first and foremost, young African Americans must want to be classical musicians, and their families must be supportive. But admittedly that is not enough. If we are to achieve true social justice in music theory, then we will be compelled to engage with the real issues. We must address African American students’ lack of foundation, especially music-theoretical, by facilitating their early training with appropriate resources, and by demolishing institutionalized racist barriers; this is the solution, not blaming Schenker, his students and associates, and practitioners of Schenkerian analysis.

Jackson may just be writing for the wrong journal. And to think this article was titled only “A Preliminary Response to Ewell” (emphasis mine). It is arguably Jackson alone, but certainly no more than these sixteen authors together, irrespective of intellectual position, who made Ewell’s current career.

“That Scared The Shit Out Of Them”

Can Philip Ewell have known he would incite such a rush to the academic pulpit, or guessed at the strange amalgamation of violent agreement and breathless protestation in the 12th edition of of the JSS? It is not likely. “I didn’t expect this to make such a splash. It’s kind of strange to be in this position,” he would tell the Journal of Higher Education the following summer. At agency here was indeed not Philip Ewell, but Critical Race Theory itself, with Ewell as useful conduit. He was surprised himself at its effectiveness.

Ewell had no trouble taking credit however. In a virtual talk at the University of Toronto, Ewell would strike a quite different note: “It’s about power. And what a few powerful white men saw […] was the potential loss of that power, and that scared the shit out of them.”

A few months passed. When Ewell’s full paper appeared in Spring 2020, it was an anticlimax indeed. Long, repetitive, heavily reliant on quotes and work by others, it will be summarized, along with much of Ewell’s subsequent work, in Part III. Readers wishing to read the entire article are encouraged to do so. Among the most significant sections was one defining the “white racial frame”: According to Philip Ewell, “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame” believes:

1. The music and music theories of white persons represent the best, and in certain cases the only, framework for music theory.
2. Among these white persons, the music and music theories of whites from German-speaking lands of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early-twentieth centuries represent the pinnacle of music-theoretical thought.
3.  The institutions and structures of music theory have little or nothing to do with race or whiteness, and that to critically examine race and whiteness in music theory would be inappropriate or unfair.
4. The best scholarship in music theory rises to the top of the field in meritocratic fashion, irrespective of the author’s race.
5. The language of “diversity” and “inclusivity” and the actions it effects will rectify racial disparities, and therefore racial injustices, in music theory.

Late Summer 2020 Timeline

In academic life, something ominous lurks just near the end of July. Pressures of the coming semester rudely intrude on a summer break only barely begun after final duties of Spring. Faculty and administration return to campus to discover one another’s previously unannounced needs, agendas and expected deadlines. Emails ding in by the hundreds. Retreats, department meetings, orientations, and other rituals of unclear length and purpose stake their claim on time and energy. At no other time do academics so frantically flock to action. The stress is palpable and contagious.

The COVID pandemic of Summer 2020 aggravated all the above, especially in music schools where many of the best music students took leaves at the last minute, seeing the limitations on ensembles, lessons, access to libraries and archives, and diminished course quality. This in turn reduced budgets and demanded hectic restructuring.

It was into these circumstances that then music theory Graduate student Rachel Gain injected, on July 27, 2020, a public statement on behalf of a “cross-section of graduate students” in the Division of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology (MHTE) at the University of North Texas, responsible for publishing the JSS. They demanded the university publicly condemn the journal issue responding to Philip Ewell’s talk, provide a full public account of the editorial and publication process and its failures, then dissolve the journal, hold accountable every person responsible for the direction of its publication, and finally, examine the “toxic culture” in the graduate program, the college of music, and the university as a whole. “In the weeks, months, and years ahead, we will strive to change the toxic culture at UNT. We recognize that this will be difficult work, and we are prepared to fight for inclusivity now and in the future.” (In 2022 Gain left for Yale). National Public Radio (NPR) picked up the story the same day.

The next day, July 28, the Society for Music Theory issued their “Executive Board Response to Essays in the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, Vol. 12“, stating the “conception and execution of this symposium failed to meet the ethical, professional, and scholarly standards of our discipline. Some contributions violate our Society’s policies on harassment and ethics. […] Such behaviors are silencing, designed to exclude and to replicate a culture of whiteness.”

The following day, July 29, an “Open Letter on Antiracist Actions in SMT” was posted to Google Docs. It states, “This document was collaboratively authored by eight music theorists who identify as white: Edward Klorman, Stephen Lett, Rachel Lumsden, Mitch Ohriner, Cora S. Palfy, Nathan Pell, Chris Segall, and Daniel Shanahan.” In ten days it received over nine-hundred signatures from professors in music conservatories throughout the United States, including all of the top. Many signatories were not music theorists. On the same day, the British self-appointed classical music adversary Norman Lebrecht sarcastically posted on his ubiquitous blog, “Let’s Kick That Racist Schenker Out of Musicology“.

Two days later, July 31, seventeen faculty members of the University of North Texas Division of Music History, Theory, and Ethnomusicology co-signed a “Statement of UNT Faculty on Journal of Schenkerian Studies“, which agreed that “[t]he treatment of Prof. Ewell’s work provides an example of the broader system of oppression built into the academic and legal institutions in which our disciplines exist. As faculty at the College of Music we must all take responsibility for not only publicly opposing racism in any form, but to address and eliminate systematic racism within our specific disciplines.” The National Review picked up the story the same day.

The next day, August 1, Yale University Department of Music published a “Statement in Support of Philip Ewell,” saying “We believe that the execution of the ‘[JSS’s] Symposium on Philip Ewell’s 2019 SMT Plenary Paper’ serves only to exemplify Prof. Ewell’s observations that ‘the white racial frame seeks to shield Schenker from unwanted criticism’ and that ‘the most important function of the white racial frame is to keep the system as it is,.” The same day, the dean of the College of Music at the University of North Texas, John Richmond, announced “a formal investigation” into the JSS. By August 4, Fox News and the Dallas Observer had picked up the story:

On August 5, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) submitted a press release and a letter to the president of the University of North Texas stating UNT was in violation of core principles of academic freedom and the First Amendment of United States Constitution, and explained that the university could not investigate the journal’s content.

On August 8, Inside Higher Education published “Whose Music Theory?“, in which they quoted Philip Ewell as saying he did not plan to read the whole JSS symposium: “I refuse to participate in my own dehumanization.”

By August 12, the digital radio station ClassicFM, whose tagline is “The World’s Greatest Music”, ran a news story titled “Controversy and accusations of racism as professor terms music theory white supremacist”

On August 17, Philip Ewell’s own institution published “Racism and Antiracism in Music Theory and Higher Education: Professor Philip Ewell Speaks Out”

By August 26, the issues were making their way into another school of music, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who posted “Philip Ewell’s “Confronting Racism and Sexism in American Music Theory”” in their already-extant “Anti-Racism Music Resources.”

On September 21, Alex Ross of the New Yorker published “Black Scholars Confront White Supremacy in Classical Music”

On November 25, the University of North Texas review panel published their “Report of Review of Conception and Production of Vol. 12 of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies“. They recommended the JSS be restructured and Timothy L. Jackson removed as editor. By January 2021, Jackson cut a pathetic figure indeed, suing his fellow professors, and losing even FIRE’s support. In February 2021, the New York Times covered all the events to date in “Obscure Musicology Journal Sparks Battles Over Race and Free Speech“, by Michael Powell.

In barely a year, Critical Race Theory had thrust Heinrich Schenker and academic music theory into the mainstream media. People who had neither heard of or cared about either suddenly held passionate views and claims to knowledge. Comments, shares, secondary coverage, responses, upvotes, and downvotes proliferated on blogs, social media and digital news platforms. This short film provides an overview of the response.

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> Part 3: I Don’t Know. What’s Music Theory?